Comments before the:
PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
Sunoco Logistics
Mariner East 2
August 8, 2016
Blair County Convention Center
Convention Center Drive
Altoona, PA 16602
PRESENTED BY:
DAVID N. TAYLOR
President
Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association
My name is David N. Taylor and I am the President of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association. We are the statewide, nonprofit trade organization that represents the people who make things here in our commonwealth; generating over $82 billion annually in state gross product, employing 570,000 hardworking Pennsylvanians on the plant floor, and supporting millions of additional Pennsylvania jobs in supply chains, distribution networks, and industrial vendors. As a native of neighboring Huntingdon County, I am grateful to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for this opportunity to testify in favor of Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner East 2 project.
The ‘shale effect’ on manufacturing is underway, making the United States, and more specifically Pennsylvania, a more attractive place for business investment. According to a new analysis by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, shale gas development could have the following impacts on US manufacturing overall:
• Annual cost savings of $22.3 billion in 2030 and $34.1 billion in 2040.
• 930,000 shale gas-driven manufacturing jobs created by 2030 and 1.41 million by 2040.
To remain globally competitive, Pennsylvania manufacturers depend on access to affordable, clean-burning natural gas and natural gas byproducts like butane, propane, ethane, and natural gasoline, which are manufacturing feedstocks. Total natural gas demand is poised to increase by 40 percent over the next decade and researchers at the National Association of Manufacturers found the key drivers of this demand will be manufacturing and power generation.
However, Pennsylvania’s existing pipeline infrastructure does not meet the needs of gas producers or industrial, commercial, and residential end users. That is why projects such as Mariner East 2 are so vital for Pennsylvania’s economy; this project is particularly important because the pipeline will be used to transmit butane, propane, and ethane.
Besides being an excellent, clean burning, affordable fuel source – natural gas is the feedstock for all of modern manufacturing – ethane becoming ethylene, butane becoming butylene, and propane becoming propylene. These products, manufactured goods themselves, become products such as polyethylene – arguably the most important input in modern manufacturing. Companies will locate where the materials are readily available and most affordable. Pennsylvania’s abundant, reliable, and cost-effective energy market will be coupled with the logistical ease of accessing these manufacturing building blocks, making Pennsylvania more economically competitive. New west-to-east pipeline infrastructure in Pennsylvania can make us a global energy leader by allowing the value-added from petrochemical manufacturing to happen here instead of Texas or Louisiana.
American energy leadership and independence beings and ends in Pennsylvania. In 2011, when the United States surpassed Russia to become the world leader in natural gas production, Pennsylvania’s natural gas development made the key contribution, as we are now the second highest producing state behind Texas. But we must be able to transport the gas to refine it, manufacture other products from it, and then export energy and manufactured goods to our friends and allies throughout the world. If we build this new energy infrastructure, Pennsylvania can become an even more vital contributor to the overall economic vitality of our nation and global security and stability.
Successfully deploying the new energy infrastructure Pennsylvania needs is our organization’s top priority. Therefore, we at the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association emphatically support the Mariner East 2 project and respectfully urge the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to do the same.